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I strongly suspect that if he tried, other countries would develop their own Internet infrastructure to the point at which it would work within their own national borders, irrespective of any regulation coming from the US. There is nothing to stop any national government from ceasing to recognise ICANN's authority over the Internet and starting up their own equivalent operating within their own borders. To a certain extent, China has already done this.

Of course, if that happens, one of the main technological and cultural advantages of the Internet - the fact that, fundamentally, it does not recognise national political boundaries - will be lost: and then it will become just like the international 'phone system, with an added and unnecessary infrastructure of entry and exit points, technical compatibility issues and so on and so forth.

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ALL lines of communication could theoretically be cut,save government secure lines for military and law enforcement purposes.

The problem when employing this mode of thinking arises when people who could have a bright idea during wartime etc which could turn the tide in our favour are restricted from doing so.

this could be done by several means.

..."gagging" is merely one of them.

educational debasement is another.

when we inevitibly go up against the likes of china and russia(and possibly india) who are churning out engineers and scientists by the thousands,all that money spent on media studies degrees and endless barrage of celebrity-worship in the papers and on telly could very easily be our undoing....and our governments over the past 40 or 50 years have been willing accomplices in this demise.

it doesn't just apply to the UK,this is western europe,commonwealth and uncle sam too.

are somehow going to reduce the whole net to a simple, safe, money-earning online entertainment system.

So far, these things haven't happened.

They can't even stop the quite blatant, massive-scale piracy of movies, music and software.

A while back it was suggested that big business web sites would somehow agree to carry each other's traffic only, or offer some sort of reduced service where you could only look at various shopping and paid-for download / streaming sites. It never happened.....

I guess this is the next rumour.......

I listened to this MP3 and to some up: Anyone wanting to send stuff (emails, files etc) around the net who wants to keep the contents secret just needs to encrypt it, or better still, hide it so it looks like something else (steganography). No change there, then.

And also theoretically in some unspecifed emergency the US government could "unplug" US net infrastructure from the rest of the world. Well, you know what? In a REAL emregency, governments could ALWAYS to this, simply by sending a few agents round to a few key hubs.

If they decide its a serious enough situation, they can do what the **** they like, declare martial law, round up opponents, etc etc. The people in power have always theoretically been able to do stuff like this. New rules to codify it (which is what this radio show goes on about) don't actually change the situation on the ground.....

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He could probably sieze it in such a way that he could control the 98% of people who dont know that much about computers and the internet.

Its in their interests to do something. Previously the people were told what to believe by newspapers, then tv. Now all that control is being lost and people can find the truth on the internet. Im pretty sure the ptb dont like that.

They do like being able to monitor people though, and being able to profile people by what websites they read, who do they e-mail etc is loved by the ptb.

So the balance is, do they want to stop people or do they want to know which people want to stop them. At the moment we are just in the knowing stage.